


Stars Uncrossed

by MarauderCracker



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternative Timelines, F/M, passing mentions of Finn/Raven (because canon)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:19:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4967821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She fiddles with a wire and thinks that, even if they managed a way for people to go back in time, there would be nothing to be done. It'd just create another timeline, and they would still be fucked in this one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

Raven Reyes isn't just a mechanic. She's not the Camp's fucking I.T. division, she doesn't exist just to fix jammed revolvers and fiddle with the guards' walkie-talkies. She didn't become the youngest Zero-G in over half a century because she knew how to splice a wire or tighten a loose bolt. She's got curious fingers and a hunger for knowledge that could keep her awake for days, she's got fire under her skin and a taste for anything that looks or sounds like a challenge. She's got like ten revolvers that she has to repair before tomorrow noon if she doesn't want to get yelled at, but they can wait.

There is joy in creating new things, there is pride in fixing the unfixable, but Raven could have spent all of her life just (she takes the tweezers to the circuit, squinting in the dim light) disassembling pieces of broken machinery and reverse-engineering them. Figuring out how something works with just her hands and her wits feels... She doesn't know how to word it --it's unlike the playful happiness from giving light to a completely new thing, or the bright arrogance that comes every time she repairs something when nobody else could. It's satisfactory in the way that itching a scratch is.

She frowns at the open dashboard, at the wires hanging loose everywhere and this stupid mechanism that isn't like anything that should be found inside a motorcycle. She wants to travel back in time to find the owner and tell them to go fuck themselves and, of course, steal their blueprints. That'd be cool, too, to be the first person to figure out time travel. She likes quantum physics, but she doubts she'll have time or resources to mess around with such things in this lifetime. 

Raven leans her right forearm on the hand-grip, eyes fixated on the rusty circuits and rotting wires, but she's not really seeing them. She's thinking of time travel. She's thinking... She's thinking that there really isn't a point to it.

She fiddles with a wire and thinks that, even if they managed a way for people to go back in time, there would be nothing to be done. It'd just create another timeline, and they would still be fucked in this one. If everything they've theorized about multiple universes coexisting is right, there is probably an alternative timeline where the nuclear fallout didn't happen already. One where the Ark didn't run out of oxygen. One where she died from the bullet-wound on her back, one where she lived and her leg still worked after that.

She thinks that she doesn't give a shit, and she wants to figure out how the hell this stupid bike worked if it didn't run on fuel, electricity or solar energy.

"Are you still obsessing over that piece of crap?" Bellamy's tired voice comes from the entryway. She turns around to see him leaning against the door-frame, with his hair a mess and his clothes all rumpled, looking like he is dreading being up just as much as he didn't want to stay in bed --she knows that feeling all too well. Her tired smile works as invitation, and Bellamy comes into the workshop.


	2. Stars crossed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raven doesn't really remember meeting Bellamy. He says Raven kicked him on the shin the first time they met --that she was the angriest five year old he'd ever seen. Her early childhood is blurry in her mind, but she knows that he stepped into her life one day and installed himself easily and comfortably.

Raven doesn't really remember meeting Bellamy. He says Raven kicked him on the shin the first time they met --that she was the angriest five year old he'd ever seen. Her early childhood is blurry in her mind, but she knows that he stepped into her life one day and installed himself easily and comfortably. 

In the first real, concise memory she has of him, she's seven and laughing at him because she can do his math homework quicker than he can --even though he's two years older than her and she's not supposed to know how to do divisions yet.

 

The second memory is bittersweet, ever-present, hidden at the bottom of the drawer where she keeps the few tools that are actually hers, and not Ark property.

She's turning nine and mom is not home. Raven is sad, and angry, and hungry, and she wants to kick and scream and pull at her own hair. She's been turning pages on her Calculus book for a couple hours now, trying to fill her head with numbers so there is no more space in it for any bad feelings, but not even math can make her feel better. (Math always makes her feel better.)

The sound of someone knocking startles her out of her sulking. She stands up reluctantly, drags her feet so the couple steps to the door will take longer. Raven hasn't told anyone that it's her birthday (not even Finn, a boy from her gym class that she befriended recently and she's grown to like a lot), so she guesses it must be one of her mom's awful friends. She's getting ready to put on her best angry face and bark "mom is not here!" to whoever is on the other side, because she doesn't want to talk to anyo-- "Bellamy!"

She feels the smile forming on her face and for a second she can't even remember to feel anything but happiness. (She should have guessed that Bellamy would remember her birthday but somehow, she didn't expect him to show up.) 

She loves him, and he's her best friend in the whole world, but he spends a lot of time studying or helping his mom with her sewing; so Raven doesn't expect him to always have the time to be with her. Sometimes she tells him she's got homework or that she's going to play with her classmates just so he won't feel guilty about not hanging out with her. She's getting really good at pretending that she doesn't hate being alone.

Bellamy has a crooked smile and his hair flops over his eyes in a curly mess and he's carrying a brown package and Raven thinks he's her favorite person in the whole world. She has to stand on her tip toes to kiss his cheek, but today she doesn't pout or huff or insult him when he ruffles her hair and says "how's it going down there?" (She's one year older now and she's going to get super tall really soon, he'll see).

Inside the package there's a shirt, lovingly made by Aurora. The fabric is soft and smells clean, and there are tiny black birds sewn on it. They aren't as neat as Bellamy's mom embroideries, and Raven thinks she might cry when she realizes that Bellamy must have done them themselves.

"I also got cookies. They've got sweetener and everything!" Bellamy says, grinning proudly as he takes them out of his pocket.

 

She can't pinpoint when she became aware that he was keeping something from her, either. In her mind, she separates life in tiny boxes, organizes it like she organizes her tools in the workshop. There is life before Finn and life after Finn. There is life when Mom was alive and life after her death. But she has no recollection of life without Bellamy. He's an integral part of who she is, the person she trusts the most in this world.

Sometimes Bellamy tells her that he can't hang out because he'll be with his mom, and Raven will see Aurora leaving Factory by herself. He looks sad a lot, and scared even more often, but he never talks to her about it. The anecdotes he tells her about his mom sound rehearsed.

The thought enters her mind without Raven even realizing it. One day she doesn't even question any of it --Bellamy is a private person and it's okay, Raven hides things from Finn sometimes. One day, the idea that Bellamy might be hiding something important from her is firmly stuck on the back of her brain and it won't come out.

It crawls under her skin. She knows it's petty and unfair, and she should be better than this, but she compares Finn's earnest honesty with Bellamy's lack of trust in her and it itches like a poorly-healing wound. It makes her sick. She thinks that she's losing him, that he doesn't want to be her friend anymore, that being around the guards made him realize how much better off he would be without her, that--

 

The third memory is not the third memory --there are a million others; a collection of bolts and tangled wires, a hard-drive with Bellamy's history notes, an old copy of the Odyssey that has his messy handwriting all over it. A shared lifetime wrapped inside a shirt that stopped fitting her when she turned eleven and grew so much that, during a few precious months, she could look down at Bellamy. His laughter when he realized his most recent growth spurt had, again, rendered an entire head shorter is just as treasured. It couldn't be held within the folded fabric, it echoed away from her in the Ark's cold corridors. The third memory has no laughter in it. 

"Did you hear?" Finn asks as soon as he's into her workshop. He's looking pale and agitated, more distressed than Raven's seen him in... probably ever. Finn is sweet and funny and easy-going, he rarely has Bellamy's seriousness. He's still a kid in ways that she hasn't been allowed to be for years, and Raven rarely expects to see anything darkening his shine. Right now, his entrance feels as if the Earth had completely covered any sight of the Sun.

There is a cold thing crawling up Raven's throat. "Aurora Blake got arrested," Finn says, and the screwdriver clatters loudly against the metal floor --she looks at her empty hand and doesn't understand how it slipped from her grasp. "She had a second child," Finn is saying, and Raven knows he's grabbing her arms, can see him leaning into her personal space but she doesn't really register it.

"Bellamy," she chokes up, looks at Finn and hopes he'll understand her question because she doesn't think she can manage another word. "He... he must be with her sister," Finn suggests, and Raven is out of the door in less than a second.

Later --years later-- she will try to recall that day and all she'll get will be a whirlwind of betrayal, worry and desperation. She'll remember the view of the Blakes' empty room like a punch to the gut, Factory Station's corridors a labyrinth where she missed Bellamy at every turn. She'll remember her own voice like a dagger against the insides of her mouth as she yelled at the guards who refused to talk to her, as she screamed "tell me where he is!". She'll remember the burning tears falling down her face as Finn dragged her away.

She'll remember Finn's words, soft and soothing, trying to keep her from sprinting towards the holding cells again. "He's not getting floated. Nick from Alpha heard from one of the Councilmen's children that only Aurora will be charged."

She'll remember her hurt, her selfishness. She's got it wrapped in that shirt along with all the sadness, with all the regret. The bitter taste of her own words when she finally saw Bellamy after three days lingers between the pages of the Odyssey (she doesn't dare open it).

 

The fourth memory is not about Bellamy, but she buries it just as deep, hides it within her chest, clutches it in the palm of her hand until the edges scratch her skin. The memory is a void --it's freedom; pure unadulterated freedom. She's alone but, for the first time in months --in a lifetime-- she doesn't feel lonely. She reaches for the stars but the Ark pulls her back, her one second of wholeness crumbles as the metallic walls shrink around her. Finn is taken from her --she holds to the pendant around her neck like a lifeline.

Three days after the send Finn to the Skybox, she sees Bellamy in one of the corridors that connect Arrow and Mecha. She thinks that maybe he knows --she thinks that she'd tell him, that she'd trust him with this secret like she trusted him with everything else. She doesn't want to feel like this, but the thought is like a drill at the base of her skull, an rusting bolt that screws itself deeper as he looks up from the floor and finds her. 

Bellamy's eyes are empty, as cold as if he was looking at a stranger. He's pale and rumpled, tired, but he purposefully straightens his shoulders and blanks his face as he walks past her. Raven suspects that he'd soften if she now grabbed for his arm and apologized --she knows that she wouldn't even need to apologize, that he'd offer his shoulder to cry on if only she asked him for it. He turns a corner. Raven doesn't know what would happen if Bellamy ignored her even after she reached for him. She heads for Mecha.

 

She pulls at the shirt and the collection of amulets and memories hidden inside it spills inside the drawer, getting tangled with the tools and manuals that she keeps there. The rusty cover of the Odyssey catches her attention, and the image of a thirteen years old Bellamy makes her eyes burn. Raven lets her fingertips run over the letters, trying to catch a texture that probably faded eighty years ago. She shoves the book in her backpack, along with the wrenches and screwdrivers she'll need.

She tears the shirt with her hands and wraps a piece of the fabric around her wrist, then covers it with her glove. She checks that the necklace is in place, takes one look around her bunk. It might be her last --whether she lives or not, at least she's sure she won't miss it. Earth is waiting for her. Bellamy and Finn are waiting for her.

 

The last thing she sees before the concussion knocks her out is Bellamy. Raven sees him just turned fifteen, crooked smile, too long hair. Almost twenty, mouth set on a thin line before he closes the door on his face and Raven's "how could you keep this from me?" echoes one last time in the corridor. Finn flashes behind her eyelids for a second --waving at her from inside the Ark. Everything goes dark.


End file.
